Logging Legacy -- Hoquiam's Timber Families Span The History Of The Lumber Industry In Washington

CUTLINE: HOQUIAM BUSINESSES HAVE BEEN QUICK TO SHOW SUPPORT FOR THE INDUSTRY THAT FUELS THEM.

CUTLINE: BO HOK CLINE / SEATTLE TIMES: HOQUIAM'S POPULATION: (GRAPH SHOWING POPULATION FROM 1890 TO 1990 NOT AVAILABLE IN THE SEATTLE TIMES ELECTRONIC LIBRARY SYSTEM.)

CUTLINE: SEATTLE TIMES: HOQUIAM, WASH.: (MAP NOT AVAILABLE IN THE SEATTLE TIMES ELECTRONIC LIBRARY SYSTEM.)

HOQUIAM, Grays Harbor County - They rushed for gold in the Klondike, for trees in Grays Harbor.

The gold eventually petered out. But the trees - skinned off the hillsides, toppled as if there were no tomorrow - kept growing back.

In a summation on the jacket of Edwin Van Syckle's 1960 book, ``They Tried to Cut It All,'' Dave James of Bainbridge Island writes:

``Grays Harbor has had a lurid and lavish past. It also has a future: supported by timber forever. They tried to cut it all. But they couldn't.''

James' optimistic blurb was written before the northern spotted owl, which prefers old-growth timber above all else, came to symbolize the clash between environmentalists and the timber industry.

If there are no modifications to proposed cutbacks on logging to preserve the owl's habitat, as many as 75 percent of those involved in the timber industry in this state may be looking for work.

As Hoquiam blows out 100 candles on its birthday cake this year, the prosperity of the 1970s is becoming a dim memory; the relative depression of the '80s lingers. And the mood of the people - from loggers and truck drivers to shopkeepers - swings as wildly as the Harbor's economic charts in the past century.

One moment, there's gloom as oppressive as a week of glowering, rain-filled clouds. The next, there's optimism and confidence that dares someone to knock the chip from their shoulders.

If one word could summarize the feelings of timber-industry leaders, tree fellers, log-truck drivers, sawyers, pulp-mill employees and their families, it would be uncertainty.

Two families that have played major roles in the history of Hoquiam and Grays Harbor are the Middletons and the Mayrs. They are the survivors, and each has coped differently with the Harbor's ups and downs.

THE MIDDLETONS

Jim Middleton, 55, is a tall, graying man, who looks Ivy League despite the jeans and plaid shirts he often wears to an office that is pretty much wood from top to bottom.

Looks can be deceiving. Middleton graduated from Seattle's prestigious Lakeside School, but went on not to Harvard or Princeton: He attended Grays Harbor Community College.

Middleton is the grandson of Albert ``Bert'' Middleton, who, along with his father-in-law, Henry Neff ``Pap'' Anderson, and Anderson's three sons, came to the Harbor in 1898 to buy the Aberdeen sawmill of pioneer timberman Capt. J.M. Weatherwax, who went bankrupt during the nationwide panic of '93.

The day one of Pap's sons, Ed Anderson, was due to leave Greenville, Mich., with his family, he received a telegram: ``Don't come. Aberdeen has just burned down.'' The family came anyway.

The Anderson & Middleton logging and sawmill operations quickly became fixtures in Grays Harbor.

Of the estimated 300 logging operations on Grays Harbor since the 1850s, it is one of the few survivors that can claim much longevity.

The firm was there:

- When the great forest fire of September 1902 raged from Central Oregon to Bellingham and blackened the skies of the Grays Harbor basin in midday.

- When the Industrial Workers of the World - the ``Wobblies'' - moved in with their ``class war'' message in 1905 and argued for higher wages ($2.50 a day was a goal), clean bedding and a modicum of safety in the woods and sawmills.

- When Grays Harbor mills provided stout, clear timbers and the shipbuilding know-how to build scores of wooden log-carrying vessels from 1900 to the early '20s, and a whole fleet of wooden ships for the government during World War I.

- When the timber industry discovered a ready market for Grays Harbor logs and lumber in Asia, Australia, South America and the United Kingdom.

- When the industry found that timber it once ignored could be turned into pulp, paper and plywood.

While Anderson & Middleton was surviving the Great Depression, Hoquiam actually attained its largest population (12,766, in 1930 census).

The firm's Harbor sawmill was a steady employer through the ups and downs of the '40s, '50s and '60s. Most of the logs were old-growth, some thicker at the butt end than the height of the tallest logger.

Anderson & Middleton prospered during the 1970s, which saw new output records set in many areas of the timber industry, and it endured the 1980s, which Jim Middleton calls ``the abyss.''

The secret of survival, says Middleton, ``is to change with the times.'' Don't become too secure.

The original Middletons and Andersons made a lot of money out of Grays Harbor timber, but they never really felt at home here. When they died, they were all buried back in Michigan. Jim Middleton's principal home is in Hoquiam, but he also has a home in Seattle.

Anderson & Middleton has moved when necessary and switched products to meet new demands. In 1977 - 68 years after the families bought the Aberdeen sawmill from Captain Weatherwax - they decided to shut it down because there was no room to expand.

Fortunately, the firm had purchased two properties in Hoquiam in the '60s - a tidewater sawmill and Grays Harbor Veneer.

Today, all the sawmill equipment has been removed from the old sawmill. The property has been transformed into a giant sorting yard for logs bound for various mills, including those in foreign countries.

At the veneer plant, across town, big peeler machines turn out spruce and cottonwood veneer for table-grape boxes. But rather than assemble the boxes in Hoquiam, Anderson & Middleton has elected to assemble them in California, close to the vineyards.

It's an old story. The Olympic Peninsula provides the trees, and the value usually is added elsewhere. Middleton, who spends much of his time at the veneer plant's California operation, hints that high union wages on the Harbor discourage local manufacturing.

``So much of what we do is away from here,'' says Middleton. ``The cedar is all exported.''

Middleton's son, Charles, runs the log-yard operation. Another son plans to work for the government, probably far from Hoquiam, when he finishes college.

Middleton says he's fed up with environmentalists. They are, he believes, less concerned about the survival of the northern spotted owl than they are in stopping all tree-cutting and bringing an entire industry to its knees.

Middleton doesn't think the environmentalists will succeed, ``because there's a million-acre national park (Olympic) that we can't touch, and they know it. And the rest of the trees that we log keep growing back.''

He adds:

``Washington, Oregon and Northern California - and especially this area - is the bread basket of forestry in the United States. The country needs us.''

Then, with a grin, he says:

``Forest products are like a whorehouse. Everybody knows you need one, but nobody wants 'em to dinner.''

But Middleton concedes that the forest industry has done ``a darn poor job of selling itself.''

``Our people are characterized as beer-swilling loggers. Not true. The guy in the Seattle area, working for Hewlett-Packard, looks up at the Cascades and sees a new clearcut, then he looks toward the Olympics on a clear day and sees slash burning. He wrings his hands. He frets every time he sees a logging truck. What does he think built this country anyway?

``The story we have to tell is that trees do regrow, that we import enough things in this country as it is, and we'd better help the balance of payments by sending out some logs.

``The pendulum will swing. I'm sure of it. We've learned a lot of lessons. We made mistakes.'' The environmentalists, he says, ``have to learn some lessons, too.''

Middleton says he was amused when Aberdeen recently was named to one of those ``Top 10'' lists of American small towns.

``The way I figure it, somebody must have come here on a nice day and had a good clam dig.''

THE MAYRS

Werner Mayr, 76, and his brother, Marzell, 74 - founders of Mayr Bros. Logging during the Great Depression - literally cut their teeth on Grays Harbor timber.

In 1912, their father, Austrian-born Marzellinus, saw a sign on a San Francisco waterfront, ``Don't Go to Cosmopolis.'' Interest piqued, he immediately booked passage.

After returning to Austria to pick up his wife, he set out across the United States. Werner was born in Ohio and Marzell was born in Washington's Wishkah Valley.

When they were old enough to work, in the depths of the Great Depression - the brothers acquired an old horse, Bess, to yard pulpwood. The next year, they acquired two more horses, Fannie and Bob.

They eventually parlayed horses into trucks and tractors. They began purchasing Forest Service timber.

Werner, the office manager, and Marzell, who stuck to the woods, still go to work every day. Many of their employees have stayed with them for 50 years, and the children and grandchildren of the early-day employees also have become a part of the Mayr Bros. family.

Werner Mayr, who holds up his jeans with red suspenders (``MAYR'' on one, ``BROS.'' on the other), looks as if he's just come in from driving a team of oxen or horses in the woods. He still has a lively step and a ready tongue.

For years, he says, Mayr Bros., like many others in the timber industry, lived from bank loan to bank loan, always paying in the end, even with skyrocketing interest in the '70s.

But in 1985, much to Mayr's chagrin, the bank foreclosed on the firm's 45,000-acre timber portfolio, most of it in the Willapa Bay region, stretching as far south as the Columbia River.

It was, Mayr says, a cruel blow, leaving the company dependent upon logs it could buy from independent loggers and from the state and federal government - the very log supply that is now under siege.

Perhaps the hardest part of the company's reorganization for Werner was being replaced by his nephew, Tom, as the company's chief executive officer.

There's nothing glitzy about the Mayr Bros. operation, on the Olympic Highway, north of Hoquiam. Werner Mayr's office is as spartan as Middleton's is handsome.

Mayr is never happier than when he can put on a hard hat and go out in the log-sorting yard, to examine peeler logs, the chipper operation to convert waste to pulp and paper, and the stacks of high-grade, kiln-dried lumber from the company's sawmill. He waves a greeting to every truck driver who comes into the yard.

``We'll sell 45 million board feet this year,'' he says, ``Our annual cut used to be 90 million board feet. But if we can't buy logs, this whole supply here (he indicates the log-filled yard with a wave of his hand) will run out within eight months.''

Mayr concedes there were lots of mistakes made in the logging industry in the past. He chuckles as he recalls the days when ``if it wasn't 40 feet long and 18 inches at the top, we wouldn't think of taking it.''

But he says he and others have learned a lesson.

``Last year I wrote a paper,'' he says. ``In it, I said that in the future we need a graduated harvest plan. Some trees need to be held 140 years, some 100, maybe the bulk 70 to 80 years. You don't get clear lumber out of 40-50-year-old timber.''

He continues: ``I know Forest Service people who have estimated there's 50 years of old-growth cutting left around here. So, if we can buy government timber at the same level as before, the second-growth would be 100 years old when we start cutting it.''

Although Mayr tends to spit out the words ``spotted owls,'' he says he is not anti-owl, that he likes all living things.

But he adds, ``Those environmentalists who call themselves scientists don't know anything about owls. The spotted-owl issue is selfishness from a wealthy group of people who want to take a people's livelihood.''

Contemplating a possible future without a log supply, Mayr says:

``There will be hell to pay when this place shuts down. This place (200 employees) is not programmed to shut down, even in bad times. We've always operated. Old people, young people, they all depend on us. It's a great way to make a living.''

Then, in a voice tinged with sadness and defiance, he says: ``These sons of bitches come to us and do this.''

But Mayr's mood quickly becomes philosophical. He says he goes to the office each day because it keeps him alive. He quotes what he says is an old German saying: ``The longer you keep going, the shorter will be the time to suffer.''

Mayr's daughter, Cathy Mackey, who runs Mayr Bros.' office, is one of seven family members who work for the company.

``There's a brain drain in Hoquiam,'' she says matter-of-factly. ``Only 1 percent return after college.'' The permanent departures include her own two sons.

Mackey, who fondly remembers family outings in the woods when she was a girl, doesn't think there's anyplace in the world ``where it's better to grow up.''

``We don't want to see the woods go any more than the preservationists do,'' she adds. ``But we want our jobs. It's not as simple as re-training someone to earn minimum wage in a service industry. We want to do what we do best.''

Virtually every store front in Hoquiam has a similar sign: ``This business supported by timber sales.''

At Mayr Bros., there's a sign in the office window:

``We are here to stay. We will find a way.''